“For the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it.” – Jean-Paul Sartré
What is it, precisely, that changes in the world, when you realize you’re the luckiest man in the world? Does the world revolve ever so slightly slower, to savor the delight of the moment, or instead does the pace of the world abruptly quicken so as to hasten the end of that luck? Is there some diffuse filter that descends upon the scene, softening all features except the ones that matter most.
But existence does not drag along with it curtain drops, and catchy melodies; existence plods, flows by, just existing, without pause. We don’t even recognize our luck in the moment; it is only later,when we recall our fortune, that we realize just how blessed we were.
To be the luckiest man in the world. To get things, inexplicably, amazingly right on the first try. To have the terrible misfortune to realize it only after everything had gone.
We are either the traveler in our turbulent experiences, or the teller of the fabulous stories that result; we can never be both. Do we decide to live the banal existence, or do we recount our fantastic adventures. There’s no good answer. But I do fear that we avoid lving the banal in order to tell a story that was never ours to recount. Perhaps, too, in some ways we avoid telling our story to live in banality.
In either case, it’s never good enough.
I’ve been blessed to have been given the time to relish in that sublime experience. But I was too young to realize just how meaningful that time was.
Existence always slips away, unknowing. And all we are ever left with is the stories we may one day tell.
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